A Weird Canadian Tax Incentive Could Get Space Mining Off the Ground

Canada is a resource-rich country, but one mining executive in Sudbury, Ontario thinks we should take our mining efforts off Earth. He's petitioning the government to start taking this seriously, and has an idea about an obscure part of the Canadian tax code that could even help fund it.

"Space mining is going to happen whether Canada wants it to or not," Dale Boucher, CEO of Deltion Innovations Ltd, told Motherboard in a phone interview. He thinks Canada should get in on the action before the field becomes too crowded.

Although no one has successfully mined an asteroid yet, these space rocks are believed to be rich in valuable minerals like gold and platinum. And retrieving them is looking increasingly possible. The NASA OSIRIS-REx probe is getting an up-close-and-personal look at asteroids called Trojans—space rocks that could exist in a gravitationally stable location along Earth's orbit. If they're indeed there, they would be prime targets for future space mining efforts.